General contractor
In short
A licensing scope covering whole structures rather than one trade. Not the same thing as prime contractor, which is a tax role.
In full
General contracting is a Registrar of Contractors license scope. A.R.S. § 32-1102 sets four general classes — general commercial building, general dual licensed, general engineering, and general residential — each covering a structure as a whole together with the management or direct or indirect supervision of work performed by other contractors. The specialty classes cover single trades instead.
For tax the term is used but never defined. A.R.S. § 42-5075 uses general contractor once, inside the definition of owner at (S)(8), where it does real work: for the MRRA exclusion, a person hired by a general contractor that was hired by an owner — or a subcontractor of that general contractor — is considered to be hired by the owner. That is the mechanism by which a subcontractor performing maintenance, repair, replacement or alteration keeps the exclusion instead of losing it for want of a direct contract with the property owner.
General contractor is not a synonym for prime contractor. One is a license scope granted by the Registrar; the other is a tax role determined per contract and evidenced by a certificate. A general contractor is often the prime contractor on its projects, and is neither automatically nor invariably.
A.R.S. §§ 32-1102(1)–(4), 42-5075(S)(8)